Let's Go Possible Force!
by Ken-Zero
Summary: The Lorwardians left behind a goldmine of technology when driven from Earth. Now our planet sends forth its first group of brave space explorers in a quest to find what may be found. Post-Graduation, something of a crossover with Voltron. KiGo later.
1. Chapter 1

Let's Go Possible Force!

By

Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: I own nothing of any characters associated with this story, or the general backgrounds, etc. All characters and ideas are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fun, not profit, and so on.

Also, since this is something of a reciprocal "gift," as it were, this story kick-off/chapter is dedicated to Ffordesoon, whose birthday it is today and whose challenge gave me the impetus to write this.

You're right, dude; every conceivable idea I had for this only reinforced it being the greatest idea ever (even if only proven with pseudo-science).

* * *

"Are you so sure this is a good idea, KP?"

Ronald Stoppable, recent high school graduate and primary savior of the world (for once), was characteristically nervous, and for good reason. He, like the others with him, was trussed up in his seat by what had been described to him as "crash webbing," something that did not instill a great amount of confidence. Under the webbing they wore tight-fitting suits of an unfamiliar material that reminded him a little bit of the battle suit his erstwhile girlfriend Kim Possible—seated in front of him—had worn during their last year of school. Helmets with tinted visors, each helmet possessing a different hue, were nearby, held on a rack mounted on the wall of the boxy cabin inside which they all sat. Everything else was in high contrast colors—shades of white or gray or black that made it easy to distinguish, in a pinch, where one object ended and the other began.

Kim turned from where she had been watching to give Ron a reassuring smile. "Amp down, Ron. Everything here was designed by Dad, or someone he knows at the Space Center, _and _the Tweebs looked at it, _and_ I had Wade double-check everything he could before we even climbed in. I'd trust anything Dad had a hand in, and if Wade would say even _he_ would ride it, I can guarantee you'll be just fine."

A couple of rather derisive sounds came from the actual control chairs at the front of their cabin, but Kim pointedly ignored them.

"Still," she said, "it's almost a shame he didn't want to come along. This could be where some of the biggest finds in history are." She turned to face forward again. "We're going to space!"

* * *

_Three months ago_

"We're going to space?"

Kim's bewildered question seemed to actually surprise her parents, her father especially.

"Well…I suppose you wouldn't have to if you didn't want to, Kimmie-cub," he said, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture, "but when we started this project, everyone that was in on it figured you'd be 'rockets are go.'"

"I…" Kim faltered. It _was _an exciting prospect, to be sure. "I don't _not_ want to go, but what about everything here?"

Dr. James Timothy Possible grinned. "Aw, Kimmie-cub, the Earth'll still be here when you get back."

She rolled her eyes. "_Dad_, that's not what I'm worried about." She spoke in the exaggerated patience inherent to all teenagers believing that their parents are a bit less than sane at times. "I'm supposed to be going to college in like three months. And besides, doesn't space travel take, like, an eternity?"

"But see, that's why this is so exciting. We've been working day-and-night to reverse engineer and learn what we can from the captured alien technology from that invasion. We're playing fast and loose with Newtonian physics, Einsteinian time-space, even quantum mechanics and string theory! This is one of the hugest advances for physics…well, since _physics!_"

Kim, seeing her father get a _bit_ carried away, rolled her eyes. "Look, Dad, it's not like I'm not flattered, but really, I'm hardly qualified. I just got out of high school, for crying out loud!"

Anne Possible, MD, spoke up for the first time. "Kimmie, dear, it's not just your father's excitement at stake here. Remember, with your help, and the help of all the others, we just beat off an alien invasion…but there's a lot of ruin left over. Your win kept people from losing hope…seeing you in a sign of progress means you've built that hope up, made it into something real they can see."

Kim frowned a bit, already seeing where her mother was going, but she didn't have a chance to reply.

"This is really what I was most afraid of when you kept doing your missions, Kimmie-cub. I was worried for your safety, of course, but I was also worried about this kind of a situation. You're a symbol, now, and so is Ronald—even Drew and his sidekick." She smiled sadly. "And symbols need to be seen to be effective."

In her parents' eyes, that had pretty much sealed the deal—despite Kim's continuing protests to the contrary. And the more Kim thought about it, the more she realized that they'd had a point. She might not like it, but it was at least mostly true. And once she'd accepted it as partly true, her father's infectious enthusiasm for the idea had bled into her own view on things, such that by the end of a week's time, she was itching to be off.

Space was, after all, largely unexplored…and exploration equaled adventure.

* * *

_Present_

Kim's cheerful comment earned her another group of ill-humored comments from the two manning the actual controls, but she continued to pay them no mind.

Ron, who had taken the news of a temporary reprieve from more schooling with somewhat more initial grace than Kim (more excitement, definitely; his resounding "BOO-YAH!" could be heard for several hundred yards in all directions), continued to feel nervous, though Kim's obvious confidence helped obviate the worst of it.

Their preparations for launch, however, hit a hitch when a call came in from the base to hold the process temporarily. This, predictably, did not sit well with the pilot and head technician in the front seats.

"Whaddya mean, stop the pre-flight?" an irate female voice sounded.

"Something wrong?" Kim asked, not quite succeeding at keeping a smirk from coloring her voice. On the other hand, she wasn't trying very hard.

"Watch it, Princess, or I'll 'something wrong' _you_," Shego snarled from her place in the pilot's chair. While she didn't turn around, Dr. Drew Theodore Lipsky, also known as Dr. Drakken, did, and his stormy frown conveyed just as much irritation as Shego's voice had.

Kim, more amused by the threat than anything, relaxed in her chair, waiting for whatever interruption to pass.

That had been, in her mind, one of the more…intriguing aspects of this whole sitch, too. Apparently her mother hadn't been lying when she said "Drew and his sidekick" were suddenly symbols. They had, after all, participated quite extensively in saving the world, even if it was Ron who'd delivered the true _deus ex machina_ strike and ended the threat for good. As such, the UN had seen fit to hang medals, not nooses, around both Shego's and Dr. Drakken's neck for a week afterward.

Kim couldn't help but grin as she remembered the footage of the vine tendril growing from Drakken's neck, wrapping around Shego's waist and yanking her close…right in the middle of a "smile for the cameras" moment. Of course, television sets around the world had been treated to the sight of Drakken once again running for his life as Shego threatened to burn every petal off his neck. It was the greatest unintentional comedy ever; clips on ViewToob had passed a million views inside the first day of its posting. Another unintentional side effect was that somehow they'd ended up at the top of the shortlist of people for manning this expedition to the stars…but Kim had realized that, at the very least, Drakken's mad science and (occasional) bouts of brilliance, backed up by Shego's ability to keep him from serious harm, would actually do a lot to merit the pair for what could be construed as a suicide mission—or, at the very least, a waste of time.

Then, two weeks ago, Kim's father had confided to her that Drew and Shego had had their names put forward specifically _because _they were seen as relatively expendable; apparently—and rightly so, in Kim's mind—in spite of the honors granted for their part in saving the world, they still weren't fully trusted…and on the off chance that the mission was doomed to failure, well, the more cynical types would infer that Drakken, while certainly something of a genius, was infinitely more preferable to lose than anyone else.

It kind of made Kim wonder, though. Was her place, now, to watch over the other two, and make sure they didn't radically screw something up? Or worse—sabotage it? Still, that part of her mind was small and quiet compared to the growing excitement and eagerness with which she viewed the rest of the mission.

The parameters of their mission were relatively simple; in watching the Lorwardians leave after their defeat, presumably on a straight-line course for home, scientists had plotted their course right up until the ships vanished from their instruments, presumably into some sort of faster-than-light traveling mechanism. Given that every indication had led them to believe the Lorwardians were a race of conquerors, it stood to reason that there were other planets with other sentient life out there, somewhere. And now that humanity had been rather rudely notified of that fact, the decision was made that it was time to go knocking on the galaxy's metaphorical door. Thus the plan to backtrack that back-plotted course, stopping every so often to get their bearings and see what awaited them.

Her ruminations were cut short when the reason for the interruption appeared.

_So _that's_ why there were a couple of extra seats in here_.

A nervous-looking Wade Load stood in the cabin's doorway, fiddling with the helmet in his hands. He was suited up just like the rest of them, though sweat dotted his somewhat pale forehead.

"Wade!" Ron's shout was predictable. "What are you doin' here, my man?"

"Uh…" he gulped. "Well…they said that they needed someone in case of computers, and I was their first choice, but I said I could just send something remotely, but then they said it was going to be too far, and an AI wouldn't know what I do, and…and…"

"And?" Ron prompted. Kim frowned a little, upset for Wade's sake—the poor kid looked scared half-to-death—but she was just as curious as Ron, so she refrained from speaking.

"…and my mom said it was about time for me to get out of the house…"

An effusive snort issued from the pilot chair, but that was all that came from that corner. When Kim turned to glare, she only got the back of Shego's head…but Drakken had turned around again, frowning even harder.

"Did they forget that I, _Doctor Drakken_," here he raised a small, gloved hand (_Did he really put his gloves on _outside _his suit?_ Kim thought in wonderment.) imperiously into the air, "was _hand-picked_ for this expedition? Surely my genius is several orders of magnitude greater than yours, meaning you can just run home to mommy."

Instantly Wade bristled, losing a good portion of his earlier nervousness. "Look, Drakken, your genius is mechanical, and mine's electronic, so there. Besides," he added slyly, "_your_ genius only makes it nine-tenths of the way, until it fouls up somehow."

While Drakken fumed impotently, Shego interjected. "_Children_. If you two are done hosing down the plate in testosterone, we're _trying_ to get ready to go, here."

Wade obediently went to the seat behind Ron, strapping himself in without further complaint. Kim noted that the exchange with Drakken had stripped almost all the sweating paleness from him. _He probably didn't do it on purpose, but he fixed Wade right up. Too bad Drakken doesn't realize that he just sucks at being a bad guy…_

Focused as they were on Wade, no one else noticed one last figure enter the cabin until she sat down and strapped in beside Ron.

"Yori?"

"_Hai,_ Ron-san. It is my honor to accompany you all on your journey."

It took some effort—more than it should have, Kim told herself—to not turn and glare at the ninja girl. After all, _someone_ had convinced Ron that his and Kim's relationship wasn't really going anywhere after graduation—case in point, the utterly mortifying day when Kim had managed to almost completely lose her memory, and even when she got it mostly back, hadn't believed that they were dating—leading to him offering to break it off before they got hurt, or some such reasoning. Kim had argued for them remaining a couple, but Ron had actually managed to out-stubborn her on it, so for the sake of their friendship she'd given in.

Regardless, it didn't seem like the kind of decision Ron would have normally reached on his own, which is why Kim remained suspicious that _someone_ (she again carefully did not turn to glare) had suggested the idea to him in the first place.

Finally, after nearly a minute of stewing, Kim felt like she could control herself, so she turned around. "So, Yori…what brings you along?"

The lady ninja regarded Kim with a look that bordered on…apologetic? "Master Sensei mentioned that I should return to the United States after the invasion occurred, with the intent of offering assistance…and almost immediately Doctor Director asked if I would be interested in the capacity of bodyguard for Wade-san."

"Whoah," Ron said, voice awed. "I always knew he could read the future or something."

"You kids about done with the yakking back there?" Shego's voice put in. "We're back on countdown and it would be a _little_ helpful for me to be able to hear the numbers. No more talky."

"Sure thing, scary pilot lady," Ron replied.

"Hey! Sidekick-boy! _No talky._" The shout was accompanied by a flaming hand pointed in his direction.

Ron eeped and tried to cover his mouth with his hands, inasmuch as the crash webbing would let him move.

With the lack of extra noise, it was easy for everyone else to listen in on the launch preparations as Shego continued down the rather extensive list. Several of the terms therein were new even to Kim, who was at least somewhat accustomed to the more science-fiction-y terms that rocket science entailed, thanks to her father. She could only imagine—and fervently hope—that Shego had the foggiest idea what any of those things even did.

Seriously—who'd ever heard of a _megathruster_?

Still, partially out of distrust, and partially out of the need to have more than one person familiar with the craft's controls, Kim tried to listen and understand as much as she could—even if it was as simplistic as "that bank of switches all needs to point up, and those sliders need to go forward, and that knob twists that far…"

A short time later, Shego finished off the checklist. "Finally!" she exulted, pulling the headset off and shaking her hair free. "Alright, kiddies—hang on to your lunches. This could get bumpy!"

She replaced the headset, pressed a single button, and jammed a lever full-on forward…and the craft began to shake. A dull roaring sound ramped up quickly in volume, and the vibration became more and more pronounced.

And then Kim felt her stomach try to leave by way of her feet as the vessel lurched up. Forward. Whatever direction was appropriate.

A second later the vibration died down as their land-bound tether broke away, and Shego's voice carried over the roar—having to yell to be heard at all. "Tee-plus-seven and we're picking up airspeed! Houston, we have liftoff!"

Kim couldn't help but grin fiercely at the sheer exultation that sounded in the other woman's voice. The nervousness, the anxiety, the worries and fears—all that took a distant mental backseat to the sheer excitement of taking off in a powered vehicle for places mankind had never even _seen_.

The spaceship picked up speed as it ascended through the thinning atmosphere, leaving behind one, two, _three_ sonic booms as it accelerated faster than the projections had placed it traveling. Of course, Shego's eagerness to floor it had probably not been factored in to those same designs.

Outside the cockpit, the air faded from blue to purple and finally to black, and once more Shego crowed as they continued to accelerate, angling the ship's vector for the first point on their journey, not a single person on board able to fight off the infectious, idiotic grins that that cry inspired.

"_Yeeeeeeeeee-haaaawww!"_


	2. Chapter 2

Let's Go Possible Force!

By

Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: I own nothing of any characters associated with this story, or the general backgrounds, etc. All characters and ideas are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fun, not profit, and so on.

* * *

Boredom was a feeling only one person on the fair-sized spacecraft was accustomed to having.

Ron, used to spending his time hanging out with Kim, playing video games-either alone or, more recently, with Felix Renton, their wheelchair-bound friend-agonizing over homework with Rufus' help, or saving the world, now could only attempt one of those four. He had no console on which to play, no homework over which to stress, and, for the moment, no world to rescue, which left trying to hang out with Kim…and that particular option was curiously difficult these days.

Kim kept herself occupied by making rounds of the ship itself, inspecting as much of it as she could, making mental notes about her guesses and assumptions, all in the name of learning how it worked, Just In Case. She was also trying to avoid Yori like the plague, a feat which was made tougher by the relatively small size of the ship—in comparison, at least, to a planet—and yet easier by Yori being a ninja.

Yori was handling her boredom by seeing how long she could remain unobtrusive, and seeing how long it took before either someone found her, or they forgot she even was on board until she reappeared.

Wade…was not bored. Not really, at least. When he wasn't engaged in some pedantic discussion or another with Drakken, he was up to his armpits in computer systems, trying to see and understand what made the reverse-engineered technology tick.

Drakken, conversely, was splitting his time between the aforementioned discussions with Wade, and frowning at the universe at large. The rest of the crew privately believed that his frown was etched into his facial features, a thought preferable to his maniacal grin being stuck that way instead.

Really, it was only Shego who was bored and didn't care. She'd had years of practice at ignoring Drakken's rants, tuning out the grumbles of the henchmen, and other various daily unpleasantries, all of which meant that she was _usually_ bored. She'd long since developed ways of passing her idle time that kept her from snapping. Filing either her nails or her special gloves, reading the same articles in the same trashy magazines, even sleeping…she'd found a myriad of ways to keep her attention while basically tuning out existence in general.

In fact, the only real disruptions to what had become the routine for the last two and a half weeks were the few times that Drakken had vacated his station in the command area and Kim took his seat. It had happened three times since they first launched, each time with Kim trying to be patient and ask that Shego teach her at least some of the details of commanding the complex craft. Each time Shego had repeatedly asked "Why?" To her, it was just the kind of hilariously immature thing that she was sure would drive Kim batty, and each of those three times it had worked, with her last instance running exactly one repetition of the word before Kim stormed away.

The former-as-far-as-anyone-knew villainess couldn't help but chuckle at the memory. The trip seemed to be turning in to a big waste of time, as far as she was concerned, and getting on Kim's nerves like that was her one guaranteed source of amusement—she couldn't count on the buffoon remaining as such, after seeing him step up during the invasion, and getting on Drakken's nerves was getting old.

And then salvation from her by-now-old-news magazine appeared once again in the form of Kim Possible. The red-haired heroine sat in Drakken's chair, stared out the view screen for a few seconds, and finally ginned up enough determination to risk once more asking The Question .

"So…can you find it somewhere within your agonizingly impossible personality to display the patience to teach me how to fly this?" she asked, somewhat more sharply and bitterly than she'd intended.

Shego simply raised an eyebrow, and opened her mouth.

Kim, seeing the start of that infamous word on her former foe's face, began to roll her own eyes.

"Wow," came the unexpected first word. "Normally you don't get that short with me until three or four minutes in."

Kim finished rolling her eyes, having stopped when Shego did _not_ say "why."

"Call it an anticipatory reaction," she returned. "What reason would I have had to make me think otherwise?"

"I dunno," Shego shrugged. "What's the matter? Bored?"

"_Stiff_."

"Heh." Dark-colored lips turned up in a half-smirk. "Why do you wanna know, anyway? Don't trust me flying this tin can?"

"Actually I kinda do," she said, and Shego blinked. "I mean, we're not crashed, stranded, asphyxiated, or any of the hundred other problems that can happen out here, for all I know we're not lost, _and_ we didn't blow up on takeoff or anything like that. In view of that, I think it's pretty safe to say this—not that I ever thought I would. But we're all trusting you with our lives, and you're doing a good job."

Shego's slightly almond-shaped eyes had gone progressively wider as Kim's short speech went on, and by the end of it Kim could clearly see the whites all the way around the iris. She frowned, a bit concerned that Shego had found something overly surprising or offensive in what she said. "Shego? What's—"

"PLANET!" the pilot proclaimed, pointing at Kim, whose expression darkened.

"Not funny," she grumped. She still weighed the same as she used to, for crying out loud!

"No! Planet! Behind you!"

Kim heaved a sigh but turned around anyway…and gasped herself.

Thuds on the ship's false-gravity deck plating heralded the arrival of the rest of the small crew as they crammed up in the forward area, each trying to see what Shego had seen.

Sure enough, passing by on the ship's starboard side, a brown-and-blue sphere streaked with white floated silently by, little larger than Kim's fist at this point. The planet slid across the screen as Shego hastily strapped herself in and took the controls, steering until it finally stopped in front of them.

The planet grew steadily as they neared, and soft sounds of appreciation filled the place from almost every person present—except for Drakken, who only stared in speechless wonder, having even ceased the habitual dry-washing of his gloved hands that he used to think enhanced his diabolical image.

And not a one of them could find fault with that; for as many times as they'd seen photos of Earth from orbit, and as little justice as those photos did when they had the chance to see it for themselves, this was an _entirely new_ world, something no human had ever seen before…and for the six of them to be the first to witness a sight enormously more important than even the Moon landing was a prideful, humbling feeling.

Even the ever-cynical Shego could feel her eyes starting to prickle with tears as she tried to keep a handle on the sense of childlike awe that accompanied their approach.

* * *

Four hours later, Dr. Drakken actually won the argument.

They were in orbit around their new planet. Nobody had even the slightest clue what to name the thing, but the arguments over that had concluded quickly. The most recent argument had been over what to do next—report back home, or do some exploration themselves. Drakken had argued in favor of staying, insisting in no uncertain terms that any time spent returning home was time lost in this most historic of moments, and that the chance that whatever survey crew came through next would have naming dibs on the planet as a whole, not to mention any surface features, sat poorly with him—and with most everyone else, as well.

Privately, Kim suspected he would have liked nothing more than to name the world after himself, but when she imagined him trying to do so, she almost had a giggle fit. The mental image of the blue scientist displaying his utter lack of imagination and declaring, "I hereby name this new planet…Drakken's…Planet!" was too funny to her, and yet she didn't doubt for a second that that would be the kind of name he would come up with.

Having swayed the rest of the team of explorers, though, he bade Shego dip their craft into the atmosphere. As she did, they watched the external plasma discharge as friction heated the hull to extreme temperatures. The display left a trail of fire behind them as they slowed, and when they reached an airspeed only slightly above that of standard jetliners, the plasma vanished, leaving long contrails in its wake.

The console pinged in front of Drakken. "Would you look at that," he mused. "We can breathe out here."

"Without help?" asked Wade.

"Without help," Drakken confirmed. "The air measurements are showing a remarkably Earth-like atmospheric composition. We may be a percent or three in favor of oxygen over nitrogen, but if anything that should make you feel better than usual."

The next several minutes passed with them flying over water; their speed was such that the lake, or ocean, or whatever it would end up being, was massive, easily the size of any of the major oceans back home.

And then they crossed a beach, and were cruising over land. Trees—or whatever the native analogue was—began a short way in, standing in a closely-packed stand that was a bit small to be a full forest. They skimmed well over the treetops, leaving plenty of altitude in case the land did something tricky. Birds of some sort lifted in startled gaggles from the trees, scared into flight by the sound of the passing craft. Other avians, their silhouettes larger than the first set, made swooping passes at the cloud, and Kim could see a few of the big ones flapping away with something grasped in what were presumably its talons.

The trees began to thin, no longer a solid canopy of green—a green that almost exactly mirrored one of Earth's typical deciduous forests—and rolling plains began, gently sloping hills and shallow valleys rushing by underneath as they sped across miles and miles of what seemed to be virgin land.

Another sound issued from the controls, and Shego had to tear her gaze away from staring at the scenery to diagnose the noise. Everyone else continued to stare.

Shego blinked twice at what the readout was saying before raising her voice. "Uh…people," she started, her voice more than a little excited. "You may want to hear this. According to this bird's computers, this planet's—"

"Farms!" Kim shouted, pointing.

"—inhabited." Shego finished lamely, shooting a dark look at the heroine. "Way to ruin the big reveal, Princess."

"Sorry, but look!"

Shego craned her head to look outside the window. Sure enough, the landscape had leveled out, and now the miles consisted of fields of golden, stalked plants of some kind, interspersed at regular intervals with ruler-straight roads and the occasional disturbance in the fields that probably meant some sort of building or another. Here and there the golden plants ended, the ground instead covered by short green grass with herds of some animal or another grazing contentedly. They couldn't make out any details—they were flying too high and too fast—but groups of domesticated animals like that, along with the regular farmland and constructed buildings, implied rather heavily that _something_ intelligent lived there.

A broad river, a welcome swath of blue amid the relentless browns and greens, wended its way across their flight path, and the farms stopped at the near bank. On the other side the land returned to hills, gradually becoming taller and steeper until they culminated in a mountain range.

Shego lifted the ship's nose a bit, pulling them back above twenty thousand feet of altitude, and they ascended through some light mountain cloud cover; peaks occasionally peeked up from underneath, and from their perspective it was hard to tell that the rock wasn't going to reach up and tickle the craft's underside. A few minutes later, the mountaintops subsided, and Shego dropped them back through the clouds to more gasps from the assembled group.

Ocean, blue and green and _huge_, lay before them, stretching as far as they could see in every direction that wasn't back whence they'd come.

Drakken worked something on the computer next to his usual chair, then sat back in a different seat. "This…ocean…dwarfs even the Pacific back home," he said, and his usual whiney tone was quiet for a change. "It's…difficult to even conceptualize that much water in one place."

Shego brought them down low enough that even the ungainly spacecraft was wave-skimming, and despite their prodigious speed they could see moving shadows, implications of marine life that mimicked Earth's own fairly closely, if size was any comparison.

Then they were rising again, and the horizon tilted as Shego banked the craft around to head back to the first landmass they'd flown over. She leveled off after a moment, aiming for a different diagonal across the land, following a kind of haphazard grid pattern to get as much detail as they could on each pass.

They saw more farms, though some were more well-tended than others; indeed, some had gone fallow, browned and withered under the sunlight. Aside from the farms, though, there was a distinct lack of anything else structural in this area—no homes, barns, sheds, roads, coops, shops, or any building of any sort was visible as they flew by, which was a little…unsettling in spite of the presence of these mostly-kept farms.

And then the farms ended, and barren, rocky land stretched for miles ahead of them. The transition was practically instant. Great pits and craters with smooth sides littered the landscape, and cliffs that looked more like they were cracked off by explosions—and not gradually cut by natural erosive forces—rose to heights of sixty to seventy feet. Nothing was tall enough to threaten even Shego's nape-of-the-land flying, but falling from one would still prove fatal. The ground was the cracked light brown of sun-baked dirt and mud, and the rock formations were reddish brown, blackened in places; no one aboard cared to imagine just what could have caused those discolored marks.

It was Shego, once more, who benefited from needing to keep her eyes on the road, so to speak; what she saw, the first sign of true civilization since arriving at the planet, was at once hopeful and completely flabbergasting. Her voice snapped everyone else's attention away from the scorched-earth remnants of the area.

"What the—it's a _castle!_"


	3. Chapter 3

Let's Go Possible Force!

By

Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: I own nothing of any characters associated with this story, or the general backgrounds, etc. All characters and ideas are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fun, not profit, and so on.

* * *

"What the—it's a _castle_!"

Shego's last word rang in the collected crew's ears uncontested by any other sound; the sheer impossibility of the sight kept anyone else from saying a thing.

Sure enough, visible near the horizon, tiny with distance but growing steadily with their approach, a distinctly-shaped building loomed up from a smattering of trees and surrounding water. White-painted, with dark colors for the roofing, it contrasted well with the setting sun and pinked sky. It was squared at the base, each corner a reinforced tower that flared out near the bottom to expand the castle's footprint. A central spire rose majestically to nearly twice the height of the corner towers, sloped so steeply and coming to such a sharp point that Shego's imagination had no trouble coming up with mental images of fantastic beasts impaled upon that point. As they neared, more details became visible—lights, bright and steady, shone through windows and hatches, clearly indicating power of some sort. A large opening at ground level interrupted the castle wall on the side facing them, more light spilling forth from within.

And most curious of all, a shield-shaped heraldic crest adorned that same wall, dominated by silver and gold.

The castle's size was apparent the closer they got—the rangefinder told Shego they were still a number of miles out, but already it seemed big enough to actually house their vessel. Shego only became more convinced of that the closer they got.

"We have to go in," Kim breathed from next to her, finally breaking the silence.

"No argument here, Princess." Shego shook her head, then looked at her former employer. "And I don't think Doctor Daffy is in any condition to say no."

Blinking, Kim looked away from the stunning view to see Drakken all but scrambling to get his gear together.

Movement from Shego's chair brought Kim's attention back to the front of the craft, as the pilot brought them in closer, slowing down enough to land. Kim felt the back of the ship dip a bit first as the view tilted up, but it leveled off soon enough as they lost all forward momentum and hovered over a clearing astride a road just outside a moat surrounding the castle.

Gingerly Shego allowed the ship to sink, her entire concentration focused on making sure they didn't crash, or sink, or suffer some other calamity. She had her pilot's reputation to live up to, after all. Watching the instruments, she followed the altimeter as it counted down to single digits, and slowed their descent still further. Finally, with a minor bump she felt only because she was waiting to feel it, they touched down, and she released a breath she forgot she was holding.

A hand tightened on her shoulder, and she looked up in surprise to see Kim's suit glove there, the redhead smiling just a bit. "I have to admit," she said, "you do have your moments."

Shego smirked, though she could feel just a bit of heat in her cheeks. "I prefer to think that I have my moments of _im_perfection," she retorted.

Kim's smile got a little wider. "Then let me rephrase: you have your _nanoseconds._"

Shego couldn't help but laugh. "Touché." She unstrapped from her chair and stood up, stretching. "I think I'm gonna have to kick your butt just to get the kinks out," she teased.

"Please," Kim retorted. "You can wait to _try_ until we go check out that castle. Just think—as high-tech as it looks, there's probably a really awesome gym."

"I'm game. C'mon, it looks like the boys need to be let out."

Kim looked to the hatch, and sure enough, Ron and Drakken were arguing over who was going to be first to step foot on an alien planet, with Wade trying to interject every few seconds. Yori was standing back, silent, making no move to join in or remove any one of the arguers.

Shego, of course, felt no such restraint. "Alright, _children_," she growled, "break it up. Or did it occur to either of you that with structures like this, there would _already be people here?_"

Drakken opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing came out. Ron merely was silent for a second, before saying, "Good point."

Kim, taking advantage of the distraction, slipped past them all and hit the hatch control. The inner door to the ship's airlock slid up, and when she stepped inside, the outer door slid down instead, sliding through a slot in the ship's outer hull to form a ramp to the ground.

"Feels a lot like home," she reported over her shoulder, where the other five occupants just stared at her. "What?" She continued down the ramp, helmet tucked under one arm.

Shego sighed. "Of _course_ the Princess would be first one out." She shook her head and followed Kim down the ramp, similarly without her helmet. At the bottom, she stood next to the heroine, taking a deep breath. "Smells good," she commented.

"Yeah, it does," Kim agreed. "Nature-y. Might be because of the extra oxygen Drakken said this world has."

They were silent for a beat before Shego spoke up. "Okay, that sounded _really_ weird. Saying something like 'this world' sounds like it's straight out of science fiction."

"News flash: we're _in_ science fiction," Kim teased. Wade came down next, with Drakken and Ron nearly tripping each other in their own haste. "At least, last I checked, flying faster than light was something straight out of that genre."

"Yeah, yeah." Shego rolled her eyes, before turning around to look at their ship. "Alright. Everyone off?" A round of affirmative answers came back, and she said, "I'm closing up and locking the ship. Anyone asks, I've got the keys." So saying, she produced a ring with a fob on it, pointed the fob at the ship, and pressed a button. The ramp retracted, sliding up through the slot and repositioning itself as part of the hull.

Then the craft beeped twice, a small red light visible in the cockpit flashing intermittently.

Silence reigned. Then Kim put her hand over her face. "_Daaaaaaaaaaad_," she whined.

Shego stared at the fob while Kim was getting over her embarrassment. "Seriously?" she asked of no one in particular. Then she shook her head. "Figures. You Possibles are just so…"

"Shego," Kim warned.

"Weird?" Ron offered.

"Ron!"

"Eh, that works."

"Hey!"

"C an you deny it, Pumpkin?"

"…No," Kim pouted.

"Then ignore it and let's get a move on. We've got a castle to explore, people—and until I say otherwise, _no touchy!"_ She stared pointedly at Drakken and Ron.

"No touchy, right." Ron held his hands up…predictably dropping his helmet to the grass.

It was Shego's turn to plant her face into her palm. "Let's just go…"

A few minutes later saw the group of six crossing the substantial bridge over the moat. The bridge looked wide enough to allow for several lanes of two-way traffic, and it was paved, though pocked with potholes and other craters. The whole place was quiet, with only wind and the movement of the moat water beneath to cover up the sound of their footfalls. Two pedestals—closer in dimension to towers in their own right—flanked the roadway as the bridge ended and regular ground began on the castle side. On each was a stone-carved statue of a lion.

That particular revelation startled each of them pretty severely, given that if the Middleton Space Center's estimates were accurate, they were nearly eight times as far from Earth as Alpha Centauri, the solar system's nearest neighbor. For a life-sustaining world so far away to have any sort of remotely similar animals…well, the thought strained even Ron's suspension of disbelief.

The castle continued to loom ever larger as they approached, the initial illusion of a short distance from bridge to portcullis shattered as a handful of minutes of walking brought them closer but not quite to the entrance. Kim was absolutely wowed by just how huge the place was; it wasn't as tall as some of the skyscrapers back home in places like Go City, but the martial nature of a building such as a castle made it even more foreboding and impressive, especially with the towers at each corner and the enormous central spire. The crest, quartered red and green and blue fields with a vertical stripe of silver running vertical through it all, gleamed in the midday sun. A glint of gold caught Kim's eye, and she looked up to inspect—

-and froze in her tracks.

A golden cross—not a mere plus-sign, but the definite religious symbol—was laid into the silver stripe, surmounted by a similarly golden crown.

"Uh, guys?" she asked, pointing.

Ron, apparently the only one to hear her, looked back at Kim, then followed her finger.

"Huh. Isn't that a crucifix?"

"No body on it, so no, just a cross" Shego clarified off-handedly. Then she did a double-take.

In the general hubbub that followed, no one noticed the castle entrance raise slightly, or the slim, regal-looking man in what looked like a brown tuxedo with short tails and a perfectly-tied scarf at his throat coming out of the new exit. In fact, it wasn't until he was about ten paces away, clearing his throat noisily, that any of the six of them even thought to look…and when Wade did, the rest followed, and the discussion ceased immediately.

"Greetings," he said, in lightly accented but perfectly understandable English. "I apologize for the rudeness of this introduction, but we are in a state of turmoil. You see…" He paused and grimaced, as if it pained him to speak. "The princess is in another castle."

* * *

"…and _that_ is why the people of this planet are in hiding."

It was about an hour later; the six space explorers were seated in a room inside the castle, its furnishings a curious, somewhat chaotic blend of ornate and technological. Their host, who had revealed his name to be Coran, had explained why he had greeted them the way he had. In short, they had been brutally attacked only a short while ago—a matter of a handful of days—and the local ruler, a young woman by the name of Allura, had been snatched up by the invading forces, who had then flown off with their prize. Coran wasn't sure what fate would befall her, but he held little hope, because raids like the most recent had become commonplace in the last decade and the planet lacked any sort of capability to fight them off…with one exception that he hadn't gone on to explain.

Now Shego, who'd been as silent as everyone else through the whole impossible-to-believe explanation, raised an ebony eyebrow. "The castle looked okay from the outside," she commented.

Coran nodded heavily. "Our defenses here are top-notch, and they have to be to keep the Drule from completely destroying it. This is as much a symbol of history and hope as it is a stronghold. Our only other hope is…well, by this point, nonexistent." His voice was tired by the end of his statement.

"Two hopes left and one won't work…" Kim repeated. Shego could tell the redhead was getting _that_ look.

"Oh, no, you don't, Princess," she countered, not noticing Coran's eyes widen briefly. "You aren't dragging all of us in to fix this sob story's problems. We've got our own priorities, so now that we've had tea and crumpets it's time to jet."

"And why not? Wouldn't tracking this Allura of theirs down qualify as more exploration? We haven't been to anywhere _but_ here yet, and there's a _lot_ of galaxy left to cover."

"Because, genius, it ain't _exploration_ if someone's already _there!_ Yeesh, are you red or blonde?"

"But _we_ haven't been there yet, so it still counts!"

"No, it doesn't!"

While the verbal spar continued, Wade turned back from the spectacle to Coran. "How is it that you speak English? There's no record of anyone leaving Earth, much less displaying this kind of technology."

Coran looked surprised. "And here I was going to compliment you on your fabulous Arthrian!" He started to smile, but then it froze. "Did…did you say Earth?"

His question got Kim's attention, and Shego harrumphed in irritation as they suspended their argument. Still, she turned her attention to the dweeb and their host. She hadn't even thought about it once she accepted that Coran was human, but the techno-dork had a point.

"Yeah…" Wade said cautiously. "What about it?"

"Then…the Galaxy Alliance still exists? It has sent aid?" The hopeful, plaintive, almost begging tone of his question was painful to Shego.

"Nope," she said shortly. "Just Earth. No such thing as this alliance thingy. And they didn't send aid, just us."

"We're aid enough," Kim put in, and Shego had to restrain herself from throttling the other woman.

"You're not the one in charge, here, Kimmie," Shego returned, her temper beginning to flare. "_I _am. And I say no."

"Then you can go home, and I'll stick around to do what I can."

Shego, of half a mind to just _let_ the stuck-up little so-and-so mutiny and strand herself here, growled heatedly. "Look, you. I go home without you, and there go my hopes of relaxing for the rest of forever, because they're gonna lock me up faster than usual if you're not there, too. Even if it's not my fault—which it wouldn't be, 'cause you're the one with the hero complex."

"You used to be one, too! Besides, don't you think there'll be some sort of reward involved—_especially_ if you save a planet ruler like this?"

Shego snorted. Apparently, Kim thought money was the only way to get her to do anything. The sad part was, in large part, she was accurate in thinking that. And now that Shego was thinking about the castle, and everything around it…

"Look," Kim continued, "you call me Princess all the time, but we both know I'm not one. But apparently there's a _real_ one here –well, usually—and _royalty _means _money_."

Shego growled in annoyance, but the kid had a point. And green had _always_ been her weak point…

"Argh! Fine. But I want it clear that I'm in it for the money, and all I want to do is play chaperon. You want to go out and get yourself killed, it's no skin off my nose, especially when we could have avoided it altogether." Having had enough of Princess Priss, Shego left the little impromptu meeting for the saner locale of their ship.

"Well…that could have gone better," Ron remarked. Wade and Drakken nodded.

Kim sighed. "Look…Coran, I'm really sorry to speak in your place like that, but it was the only way I could have gotten her to go along, and she's the only one that knows how to fly for us…since I'm guessing you meant that your leader is on another planet."

"Indeed," Coran answered, nodding sagely. Kim idly wondered if he had any other personality besides "wise, old adviser"—and even "old" was pushing it, given that his still-brown hair made him look not even forty years old.

Then he seemed to shake himself. "But where are the rest of my manners? It is late, and you've doubtlessly been on a long journey; I know Earth is no short distance away from Arus. Please, relax, stay the night at least. If you leave, at least do so freshly."

"My man!" Ron practically shouted. "Dude, you are alright. And this is one _bon-diggety_ place to spend the night!"

Coran looked…confused. Kim couldn't blame him; Ron's lingo was hard to understand at times even for those closest to him.

"He means, 'Thank you,'" Kim clarified with half a smile. "And…I guess we're taking you up on that?" No one said otherwise, so Coran nodded and led them out of the room they were in and to another section of the castle.

The new area looked to be just about as opulent as any of them could expect the inside of a castle to be, high technology or otherwise. The designers had clearly opted for a more personal touch; the walls and columns were decorated with dark, rich colors, and the floor was actual polished stone, so perfectly buffed that it could nearly serve as a mirror. Hanging tapestries kept the area from resonating too loudly with stray sounds, each woven scene depicting what Kim surmised was some scene or another from the planet's history, recent or otherwise. Many of them involved what looked like multicolored animals, especially large cats, seemingly in keeping with the castle's outward theme of lions.

When Coran stopped to show them to their rooms for the night, every single guest there nearly fell over in shock. The rooms looked to be like what a visiting head of state would stay in, and—if possible—were more heavily decorated and fancy than the hallway. Enormous four-poster beds dominated the floor space, with similarly oversized wardrobes and foot lockers being the remaining wooden pieces of furniture. Thick carpeting covered each room's floor, and drapes that looked almost as heavy as the carpet covered windows that were simply too huge to be made of normal glass without shattering under their own weight.

Everything inside the room looked to be the height of fantastic luxury, and Kim was sure that the opulence of even one of the rooms would put a considerable dent in any of even Shego's ill-gotten fortunes. It actually left her feeling a little uneasy, as such open displays of boundless wealth usually did, but she resolved to keep it to herself.

Especially since Ron was taking to the place like it was a giant Bueno Nacho.

She felt her spirits lift a little bit, watching him run around the place as though he was years younger, pulling open drawers and doors and cabinets and so on, carrying on like it was the neatest thing he'd ever seen. He shouted for both her and Yori to come look at something, and Kim felt a familiar flash of anger, but she pushed it aside. She did have more important things to worry about, after all.

"Go see what he found," she said to the ninja girl, who was standing nearby. Yori looked back at Kim, more than a little surprised; Kim returned the look with a thin smile, effectively and silently conceding their subtle tussle over the blond boy. "I have to find Shego and drag her back inside," she explained. "She'll _flip_ when she sees where she gets to stay."

There was a similarly small smile on Yori's lips as she bowed deeply to Kim and went in to see what Ron had found. Kim heard her say something to "Stoppable-san" and idly wondered when the Japanese girl would feel loose enough to use only his first name. Then she turned on her heel and walked out.

She found Shego leaning one shoulder against the side of their parked spacecraft, staring away from the Castle of Lions. Kim's boots, lightly-soled to save weight as part of a space suit, made little noise as she kept moving forward, but she knew that Shego would normally be able to hear her approach from several paces away.

The former thief didn't turn around, though.

In fact, it looked to Kim like she was tightening up, if the barely-noticeable drop of her shoulders was any indication. The heroine came up behind her and tapped her on one tense shoulder.

"Go away." The words came out tersely.

"No," Kim replied.

"Go _away_."

"No."

"Scram."

"No."

"Beat it!"

"Make me."

Shego, seeming to take her up on the offer, snarled as she whirled around, hands aflame with her signature plasma. Kim hastily backed out of range, finally settling into a guarded stance a number of paces away…and the fight was on.

They traded blows for several minutes, lasting longer than any of their normal fights only by virtue of there being no self-destruct device, no authorities bearing down on the scene. It was pure, intense, and exhilarating, and it left no time for talking, as both combatants poured every iota of concentration into attack and defense, strike and block and counter, dodge and roll and parry.

As they neared the ten-minute mark of total exertion, the pace of the fight began to slow, winding down to something approaching _pro forma_ sparring. Even that lost gradual steam, ending entirely when each blocked the other's high kick with one of their own, legs meeting at the ankle, elevated above their heads.

The battle ended then as both women flopped onto their backs, breathing harder than they had in weeks.

Kim was the first one able to get words out around her panting. "Shego…"

"Don't…wan'…hear it, P—"

"I'm sorry."

Silence descended again as they continued to recuperate, Kim out of need for air, Shego out of total stupefaction. When she finally had enough control to not sound like a smoker who'd finished a marathon, she asked, "What for?"

"For…I don't know, for being me."

"Heh. That's a new one…"

"I'm serious!" She pouted at the sky. For some reason, it was easy to say it straight up and have Shego overhear it. Easier, at least, than she assumed it would be to say it to the other's face. "Look. I know you're against the whole idea. And I promise—I'll pinkie-swear, if you want me to—that once this is over I won't ask to help anyone else until we get home."

"Yes, you will," Shego replied tiredly. "You can't _not_."

"I'm still going to try!"

"Why, Princess?"

Kim's brow furrowed. "Why what?"

"Why are you going to try? Assuming I believe you, of course."

Kim rolled onto one side so she faced away from Shego. "Because…"

"Because why?"

"Just because."

"Because why?"

"Just because!"

"Because isn't an answer," Shego nagged, reminding Kim so strongly of one of her old teachers that she couldn't help but start laughing. And after a second, the utterly _ridiculous_ nature of their argument got Shego laughing, too.

It was strange, in a way; they'd been mostly cordial to each other pretty much since just before liftoff back on Earth, hadn't had a physical confrontation until just now, had been downright amicable in some cases. And yet neither had really _relaxed _in the other's presence. There had been a couple of moments of letting down guards, but at this particular moment, in all its absurd humor, they were actually _getting along_.

Almost like friends getting over a quarrel.

The thought made Kim pause, her laughter dying away as she thought. She rolled again onto her other side, facing Shego, who was wiping a tear from the corner of one eye while her own laughs were stuttering out.

Kim had to admit, it felt good to make someone else smile—even if that someone else was her old nemesis. It was something of a relief after the last handful of months back home, what with graduation and the invasion and breaking up with Ron and so on.

"Can we be friends?"

Kim instantly clapped a hand over her mouth, feeling her face heat with a blush. _I can't believe I just said that! Stupid!_

Shego raised one eyebrow, but she moved no further. She was still slightly smiling, though, which Kim took as something of a good sign; so, fighting down her mortification, she lowered her hands and kept talking.

"Since, you know, we're supposed to really be in on all this together, and it's supposed to be bigger than us all, and all that other stuff…I just figured we need to be able to get along to avoid killing each other, and you and me are the only two people really able to kill each other for real…though Yori probably could, and maybe Ron could now that he's got the monkey stuff, but not Wade or Drakken…and you did such a good job flying us here and all that, which I think is pretty cool, and…well, I just think it would be neat if we could be friends, instead of always worrying who's going to stab who in the back."

"Stab _whom_ in the back," Shego corrected, and Kim narrowed her eyes even as Shego cracked another grin. "Hey, who's the teacher, here?"

"Ugh." Kim scoffed and got to her feet. "Whatever. Come on, everybody's waiting inside. The rooms are awesome. You'll love them, they're all big and luxurious."

Shego got up, too, still grinning. "So long as I get the one next to yours, it's all good."

Kim shot her a sideways glare, her cheeks just a bit red. "What are you planning?"

"Now, now, Princess; that would spoil the fun!" And she took off running.

Kim gave chase, but not before realizing that while Shego hadn't said outright said yes to being friends…

…neither had she said _no_.


	4. Chapter 4

Let's Go Possible Force!

By

Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: I own nothing of any characters associated with this story, or the general backgrounds, etc. All characters and ideas are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fun, not profit, and so on.

* * *

"So let me get this straight," Shego began the next morning, as Coran and the group of space explorers crowded around a table in the castle's lavish conference rooms. "Your princess got snatched from your figurative fingers, in spite of your best efforts"—her eyes slid to a screen in the room showing part of the blasted, rocky landscape they'd flown over before finding the castle—"and now she's either en route to, or already at, some creepy planet with a name I'm not even going to bother trying to say, captive of some evil prince whose name I'm also not going to say. What is this, Disney or something?"

Coran's blank stare told her apparently the joke hadn't made the translation, though she felt some gratification at the quiet snickers to her left.

"Anyway, so since _our_ Princess so bravely volunteered…" Shego's sarcasm fairly well dripped from her words.

"Hey! I said I was sorry!"

"…it looks like we get to take you up on that rescue attempt. I guess that makes the first question, where is this planet?"

Coran nodded, the unabashed relief and gratitude in his eyes making Shego uncomfortable. "Planet Doom"—he paused when he saw her wince—"lies only one sector away, but it is the headquarters of the powerful Drule Empire. Zarkon, its ruler, has been after us for some reason or another for the last thirty years…this most recent excuse is because his son, Lotor, desired Allura, and Zarkon sees no problem in essentially giving his son anything he wants…aside from the throne."

Shego struggled mightily to keep a straight face with all the names. _Seriously_, she thought, _it's like they cherry-picked the worst of the lot from every horrible sci-fi magazine of the 1950s._

"Because of the size of the Drule fleet, it's unlikely we'll be able to use brute force. What we need is a more covert method of getting in, finding Princess Allura, and getting her out. We—"

He stopped speaking when he noticed half the people at the table outright laughing. Indignation colored his next words, delivered in a stiffly formal tone.

"I'm sorry; I didn't realize that saving and protecting the _ruler _of my _planet_ was a cause for humor."

Instantly Kim sobered. "We're sorry, Coran, it's just…well, we…"

"What Pumpkin's trying to say," Shego cut in, a smirk still firmly in place even if she wasn't laughing, "is that at this table are probably some of the best representatives of how to get in to places they're not wanted. Me, I'm a thief—"

"Used to be," Kim sing-songed.

"Still am, Pumpkin, just haven't used the skills in a while. And Kimmie there…well, let's just say there's not an air vent she hasn't found how to fit her skinny ass through. Even the last girl here's a freakin' ninja!"

"What she's trying to say," a blushing Kim said, "is we have a lot of experience in doing exactly what you're asking us to do, so this should be no big."

With that, she hopped out of her seat, gesturing for the rest of the crowd—which included a grumbling Drakken, whom she caught muttering something about her being "all that"—to follow.

"So don't worry, Coran. We'll get her back to you."

They filed out, leaving the planetary regent standing in confused silence…only broken after the door closed behind them.

"…What is a ninja?"

* * *

"Alright," Kim said not five minutes later, with everyone once again situated around a table, this time in a different room in the castle. "How are we going to approach this?"

"Very carefully," said Ron.

"From the left," quipped Shego, at almost the same time. She turned a surprised look to Ron. "Not bad, Sidekick Boy. I didn't think you knew what sarcasm was."

"Who's being sarcastic?" he asked. What scared Shego a little was she wasn't sure if he was serious.

"Guys," Kim warned, her eyes flashing. "Can we be serious?"

"I am!" complained Ron, confirming Shego's suspicions.

"Not me," said Shego. "It's a survival mechanism."

Kim's eyes slid almost against her will to where Drakken sat, frowning alternately at the tabletop or at Kim. She glanced back before she caught his beady eye.

"Fine," she grumped. "Okay, so. How are we going to do this? As far as I know, we have us, our suits, and our spaceship. And from what Coran said, it's not like there's just some easy exhaust port to sneak in through."

"Geek," Shego coughed into her fist.

"You got the reference, too," Kim said with a thin smile and thinner eyes.

"Actually..." Wade butted in, seemingly absorbed in one of the room's wall panels. "I think I...could..."

He stood up, eyes still locked on the wall, and wandered over to it. A press on a seemingly innocuous portion resulted in the top third of the wall sliding higher still, revealing a recessed area that lit up once the wall finished moving. A display screen flickered to life, and a keyboard of sorts slid out and angled itself down slightly. Wade watched it happen with an air of satisfaction while everyone else goggled at him.

"I found one of these last night in my room," he explained to the stares. "Thought I recognized the pattern on the wall here. The real kicker? The keyboards are laid out just like at home. Go figure, huh?"

That got a collective, almost clueless blink from all except Drakken, who put a gloved hand to his chin. "Which suggests," he began, "that either the system can read a preferential input method from some sort of quick mental scan and configure itself accordingly, or..."

"...or," Wade continued in parallel, "it's actually constructed as a QWERTY input method and either developed in parallel..."

"...or before what we use, which, along with the architecture and decoration, suggests a common ancestry that predates the earliest civilizations on Earth..."

"...or some kind of temporal event that resulted in this planet being deposited here in the past, in turn suggesting that Arus here represents the direction technology is going to take in the next unknown period of time!"

The other four simply stared as Wade and Drakken lit up like kids at Christmas, continuing to exchange a stream of ideas and theories that quickly bypassed any working level of knowledge that the rest of them possessed.

Kim stared at them wide-eyed; Ron's eyes crossed trying to keep up; Yori just let them speak, waiting for the useful information; and Shego leaned back in her chair, kicking her feet up on the table and withdrawing an emery board from...somewhere...and starting in on her nails.

The action drew Kim's attention, breaking her out from the sort-of daze she'd been in. "Boys," she said, then repeated herself a bit louder when it seemed they didn't hear her.

"Hey!" A small flicker of green plasma spattered against the wall next to Wade, effectively gathering their attention. "Our Fearless Leader would like your attention, children."

"Thank you, Sergeant Shego," Kim said dryly. "Though I thought you were our Fearless Leader."

"Meh," the greenish woman shrugged. "Your idea, you can handle this part."

"Gee, thanks. _Anyway_," the redhead forced out, "Wade. Anything in there we can use?"

"What do you want?" he asked, and continued at her eyeroll. "No, seriously. There's probably anything you need in their systems."

"How about their fleet?" Kim suggested. "Since we really do only have our ship…"

Wade nodded and began to key in his search. Nearly a minute passed in silence before he spoke.

"Looks like they've got a few basic types. A command ship, which, from archival footage, is what…Zarkon…rides in." He looked like he'd swallowed something particularly offensive after saying that. "A few battleship-type things. And a lot of…smaller ones. Fighters? I guess?"

He pressed a button on his keyboard and the center of their table split open, revealing a round ring of metal that gradually rose until something clicked into place. It began to glow, and a three-dimensional holographic image of a _huge_ number of craft filled the air between all the attendees. True to how Wade had described it, there was a large, wicked-looking shape in the middle, all nasty curves and tendrils that somehow gave the impression of a giant fang pointed forward. Around it were a small number, perhaps half a dozen, of other star craft that were similarly shaped if lacking the same overall dimensions.

And sprinkled liberally through the space between them all, and effectively surrounding them, were dozens, if not hundreds, of small, nasty-looking craft, with a forward-sweeping fuselage slung under a cockpit and pair of stubby wings, each point except the cockpit ending with a bulb that Kim surmised had to be a weapon of some sort.

"From the looks of it," Wade said, "they're more feared for numbers than anything else…though when you have strength in numbers, quantity makes up for lack of quality."

He pressed another button, and the hologram fizzed into what appeared to be footage of an attack right there on Arus. The hologram showed an onslaught of the fighters dropping in out of seemingly nowhere, opening fire—_With lasers, of course_, Kim thought with a mental sigh—at what looked like a town on the edge of the no-man's land. She saw a few people on the ground, running at top speed for any shelter they could find; some made it to a cave nearby, pulling as many others as they could along and in before the Drule could get to them.

And then there were the unfortunate few, the double-handful of people that were stuck outside for too long, or who were just unlucky…as the Drule, falling on the town like a pack of raptors, opened fire from their fighters, and a torrent of laser fire filled the air. The unlucky few were caught in the opening salvos, and no trace was left when the beams of energetic light cleared. The others made it into buildings or other places of seeming shelter, only to have that shelter explode violently as it was pumped full of energy.

The projection ended only a minute or so later, and this time everyone's faces were grim.

"Thanks, Wade," Kim said, privately a bit surprised to see disapproval even on Shego's face. Drakken…well, he wore a permanent frown anyway, so she wasn't sure, but the green villain usually welcomed chaos and destruction. At least, from what Kim could remember.

Still, she remembered, Shego hadn't gone so far as to actually kill anyone before, for whatever reason. Perhaps it was that lingering shred of heroic idealism. Perhaps it was simply pragmatism in the face of building a career out of leaving no traces of herself. Whichever it was, though, it warmed Kim's heart that even her snarky, sarcastic new friend with a head for trouble – and no lack of talent at getting in to it – wholly disapproved of the slaughter from that video.

"So we know what they do. I'm pretty sure that's a good indication of why there's all that land that's all blasted and broken. And they've taken something extremely important to this place without any regard for the people. Anyone doubt that these Drule are the Bad Guys?"

"Hate to play devil's advocate," Shego raised a well-manicured hand, "but just remember you're only getting one side of the story. Maybe these guys were wronged first by the Aruses. Arusites. Arusians? Whatever."

"Hey," Ron protested, "we wouldn't be sticking up for the Bad Guys!"

"No, Ron," Kim said, almost grudgingly, "she has a point. Maybe we can ask Princess Allura when we get her back. But!" She held up a finger. "We _are_ going to get her back, because whatever the motivation, she was taken against her will."

She got decisive nods from Ron, Yori, and Wade, a look from Shego, and nothing from Drakken, which is pretty much exactly what she was expecting to get. Taking a deep breath, Kim continued.

"Alright. Does anyone have any quick ideas to get us started?"

* * *

It was a more serious group that found Coran just over an hour later, the regent apparently having spent the intervening time reviewing some footage, if the screen he closed as they entered was any indication. "Welcome back," he greeted.

"Thank you," Kim nodded. "We think we've come up with a plan, but I wanted to see if there was anything you had to change or improve…since, y'know, you're the one that knows all about these guys."

Coran nodded. "Very well. What do you have?"

Shego, both anxious to leave and _do something _and content to let Kim lead this part, tuned the conversation out as she idly examined the area. She figured it was likely their plan wouldn't change much—and even if it did, it's not like her part in the whole thing would be radically altered. Fly the ship, beat up some goons, make sure no one on her team got beat up—_Well, maybe if either buffoon gets hit a few times, I can blame it on being otherwise busy_, she mused, lips curling into an idle smirk—and fly back out, that way hopefully plus one princess.

"Shego?"

Brought out of her light musing, she looked over at the redhead. "What?"

"Just making sure you're still with us," Kim smirked. "You looked a little _spaced out_."

Shego grimaced. "Eugh. Professional advice, Kimmie, leave the bad jokes to the bad guys."

"At least you're paying attention," the hero teased, before turning back to Coran, who in turn looked a little amused at the banter. "I guess that's it, then. We'll leave shortly. And thanks for the ideas; that should make this a little easier."

"No," he protested. "The thanks go all to you. Even if you don't succeed—"

"It's no big," Kim assured him with a dismissive wave. "We're all experts at what we do. We should be in and out of there in a hurry."

"All the same," Coran said, his eyes shining with unshed tears, "that you are even trying is a wonder unto itself. I cannot thank you enough, strangers."

"Really, it's no big. It's what we do." Kim was starting to blush, uncomfortable with the almost puppy-like gratitude.

Shego cleared her throat.

Kim, internally grateful for the reprieve, rolled her eyes. "What we do _now_," she corrected herself. "Better?"

"Much."

* * *

After another hour, the whole group of six was back inside the craft that had brought them, everyone occupying their same seats as the flight over. Shego was putting the finishing touches on her preflight, Ron and Yori were conversing quietly about something or another ninja-related, Wade was back to his original nervousness, and Drakken was rather petulantly watching Shego do her thing. He'd wanted to perform the checklist, but a silent glare from the light green-hued pilot and the equally quiet flare of plasma around one hand had scared him off, and put him in his current funk. And Kim was focused on the task at hand, going over the plan in her mind obsessively, looking for anything she could fine-tune or tighten to help it survive first contact with the enemy.

She almost failed to notice when Shego sat back and blew out a deep breath. "Okay, kids. Buckle your seatbelts and keep your hands and arms inside the bus at all times. This ride could get bumpy."

She sat forward again and grabbed the controls, easing the ship up and off the ground before sliding the main thrust lever forward. The craft picked up speed quickly, and as they watched the sky darkened from bright blue, to a deeper color, through purple, and finally fading to the diamond-studded blackness of deep space.

"I'm never going to get used to that," Wade muttered, and Kim turned her head to flash him a smile.

"Next stop: Planet D-…gah," Shego spat. "Who named these things, anyway?"

* * *

Holy carp, an update? Must be a sign of the apocalypse.


End file.
